News

The email came as no great surprise, but even though I was aware that John Atkinson was making preparations to leave the bridge as captain of Stereophile, seeing it in black and white on my laptop screen this morning gave me a bit of a jolt.

Remote updates strike again. Twenty years ago, the very idea that we’d allow a corporation unfettered access to our digital entertainment products, music hardware, or our refrigerators or televisions would have seemed positively Orwellian.

We’ve been having a lot of visitors to our place following the birth of my second daughter two weeks ago, so when Harry and Sally Lee who founded and run Aurender asked if they could drop by and see us it was an added bonus because having previously only connected with Harry via email I was looking forward to meeting him and his wife in person.

T+A is a German hi-fi manufacturer I’ve heard about, on-and-off, for several years. Known for outstanding sonics, implementing high-quality components, with outstanding fit and finish, the company somehow always seemed to be flying under my radar.

The Selekt DSM in integrated amp/Katalyst guise is a solution for those individuals whose box count could be on the rise and are looking to streamline operations, or for the person who is looking to get into (or back into) high-fidelity and wants something that can do-it-all and has a long shelf life with plenty of future-proof built in.

The vinyl resurgence of the last several years confounded some manufacturers and was simpatico for others. Those who saw it as a fad seemed to be misinformed and those who saw it as a resurgence for a format that is just as viable today as it was 50 years ago now seem prescient. McIntosh it seems is in the latter camp. Not only do they embrace the LP, they embrace the modern LP collector and music lover who not only wants vinyl playback ability in a sound system, but digital and streaming options too.

Today’s computer-based software has become the modern version of the stylus/cartridge to the record player we call DAC/Streamers. And there is nothing out there quite like Roon audio-playback software; it has, in many ways, made itself the de facto audiophile playback application of choice in the last few years.

The Venetian wasn’t “dead,” so to speak. Before I set out to commit to CES 2019 I wanted to make sure there would still be something to cover. But as the weeks before the giant Las Vegas electronics show drew to a close, it become slowly apparent that my schedule was filling up… over filling perhaps.

French high-resolution streaming and download service Qobuz used this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) as a launch pad to announce that their US version is now in beta and “available for registration to US customers…”

NAD has seen the writing on the wall for music and connectivity-first oriented consumers who want high-fidelity in their homes with ease of use, as few cables as possible, one box and a price point that is going to offer high quality with technological longevity… oh, and great industrial design chops so it fits in seamlessly with today’s modern decor in urban dwellings.

Updates. In a world of instantaneous answers at the tip of our fingertips or tongues as we wag either at our various platform-specific digital assistants to tell us want we want to know, waiting for an update on anything can be a tortuous predicament on our first-world list of problems.

Imaging. That’s the first thing I noticed after I spent all of five minutes getting the new KEF LSX Wireless Music System up and running, that and prodigious, clean bass that seemed improbable from an $1,100 USD pint-sized loudspeaker not even mounted on stands.